Partisan bullcrapmanship

Something that's widely practiced in politics is partisanship. This is when someone takes an action soley because of political party affiliation. For example it might be a Republican who is pro-abortion or pro-choice voting to support an anti-abortion measure simply because the Republican party says so. Someone who does that denies their own sense of what's right, and allows someone else to tell them what to do.

Partisanship is the act of drawing artificial lines in the sand, and just because someone is on the other side of the line, you get to beat them up.

The latter especially seems true of the bullying which the Republican party has engaged in since the mid-1990's. For example the incessant sniping at President Clinton was nothing more than the type of bullying done by children on the playground ... not what you'd expect from mature adults. They started with a falsified allegation of small scale investment fraud, and it culminated with an impeachment trial over lies about whether or not he (Bill Clinton) had extramarital sex. All the way it was the worst kind of bullying and "politics of personal destruction" you could imagine.

My father, a lifelong Republican and cheerleader for the Republican causes, has been totally turned off by these activities done by the Republican Party.

Rove's Most Telling Words (By Michael Tomasky, The American Prospect. Posted July 21, 2005, published by http://www.alternet.org/)

'He's a Democrat' -- with those three words now revealed, Karl Rove's partisanship is a matter of fact. Other Republicans should be ashamed of him -- and themselves.

This article goes over the current scandal - the uproar over Ambassador Joe Wilson's op-ed piece in July 2003, and the subsequent high-level plot to discredit and politically maim him, the subsequent revealing of Joe Wilson's "cover" as a secret agent, and the lies which have gone on since to cover the crime. All that hinges on the same hardline partisanship, with Rove as the chief bully.

I do not understand why some things get this town upset while others don't, but those three words should make any honorable patriot of either party both furious and ashamed. Wilson spent two decades in his country's service -- in diplomatic postings in Africa, chiefly, but also at the National Security Council, and in Baghdad leading up to and during the Gulf War of 1991. Former Secretary of State James Baker once thanked him for his "outstanding service to the nation," and the current president's father was equally effusive in a late-1990 telegram to Wilson in Baghdad.

But to Rove, that service and those testimonials meant nothing. Rove had someone run Wilson's Federal Election Commission sheet and noticed, according to the Los Angeles Times story cited above, that Wilson's campaign donations "leaned toward Democrats." That was true. And that was enough: Nail him. Even though -- get this -- Wilson had donated $1,000 to the Bush campaign in 1999!

And all this, of course, is putting aside Valerie Plame's service to the nation -- another two decades of work, dangerous work, on behalf of administrations Republican and Democratic. And finally, don't forget, there's the question -- little discussed so far, but one on which I trust prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is gathering information -- of whether any of our human assets overseas whom Plame had cultivated in her years of work were harmed after Robert Novak's column was published.

For years now the right has practiced a partisanship more intense than that practiced by either party in the last 100 years. There's no need to describe it in detail here; everyone reading this knows its basic contours. But this scandal raises the question anew: Exactly what does someone in the Bush administration need to do before some Republican stands up and says enough?

Yeah!

'Dirty bomb' detention challenged

Back in 2002 I vaguely recall a plot to unleash a 'dirty bomb'. A dirty bomb is one exploded with "conventional" explosives, but is laced with atomic material. The idea is to spread radioactive material over a wide area, poisining the area and perhaps causing illness or death.

Jose Padilla was arrested at Chicago airport in May 2002 with accusations of just such a plot.

The thing is that ever since, that's over 3 years now, he hasn't been accused of a crime. He's been held by U.S. forces ever since, but without a formal indictment etc. Err.... isn't that illegal?

We don't know whether the guy is guilty or not, and that's not the point. The U.S. believes in fair justice. If you're gonna hold someone in jail, there'd better damn well be a reason to do so. If there are no charges, then how can this guy be rightfully held?

'Dirty bomb' detention challenged

Considering the next Supreme Court Justice

A few weeks ago Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired.

That's set in motion much wrangling and, on the part of the Conservatives, gleeful chomping of teeth as they relish being able to twist the Supreme Court even further to their ideological extremes.

Last night GW Bush proposed John Roberts.

For your consideration, let me point you here:

The John Roberts dossier Everything you need to know about Bush's nominee, before the battle begins. (By Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.COM, July 20, 2005)

What does John Roberts believe? Bush's selection looks like a political masterstroke. But if Judge Roberts proves to be an ideologue in the Scalia/Thomas mold, he and the president may run into a Democratic buzz saw. (By Peter Rubin, Salon.COM, July 20, 2005)

"Sterling" judge or "extreme rightist"? Activists and scholars size up Bush's Supreme Court nominee. (Compiled by Page Rockwell and Aaron Kinney, Salon.COM, July 20, 2005)

I want to close by saying there's a principle of truth to consider. Just because GW proposed this guy, and just because we know the Conservatives want to stack the deck in the Supreme Court, a knee-jerk reaction is still knee-jerk. Give the guy consideration before leaping to conclusions.

Review: Bankruptcy 1995

This book Bankruptcy 1995; the Coming Collapse of America and how to stop it is about an event that never happened. Namely, the numbers presented in the book formed a prediction, that in 1995 America's income and expenditures would become unbalanced and head into an exponential debt spiral.

That didn't happen, but the scenario described in the book appears to be well founded, and highly alarming. And, the scenario is even more apropos for consideration today with the tremendous debt GW Bush has saddled America with.

The author of Bankruptcy 1995 is Harry Figge (with ghostwriting assistance, no doubt). He's an engineer turned CEO of a fortune 500 company. One claim to fame beyond that is that in the early 1980's he was co-chairman of President Reagan's Private Sector on Cost Control, also known as the Grace Commission. The Grace Commission is the ones who infamously found the $500 toilet seats and other forms of "waste" in defense spending.

He explains in the book that his motivation for writing the book was to explore an alarming scenario he saw forming in the U.S. At the time several countries, primarily in Latin America, went through throes of hyper-inflation driven by huge debt loads. He witnessed the runup of debt brought on us by Presidents Reagan and GHW Bush and wanted to determine whether the same hyper-inflation scenarios were possible in the U.S. And, if they were possible, how to deal with them in the best way.

He begins by laying the blame at the feet of President Johnson. He claims that before Johnson the country operated on a "pay-as-you-go" basis, that generally meant a balanced budget and little debt. The only time debt would build up is in war-time (a.k.a. "War Bonds") and would be quickly paid off.

From my perspective of having grown up with a country always in debt, that seems a little foreign. However it is an ideal to which I would love for this country to follow. It makes too much sense, because debt involves spending extra $$'s on interest. As I explained in my personal finance recommendations, that extra money spent on interest directly corresponds with our life force.

Johnson's failing was to try and fight two wars at once. The first being Vietnam, and the second being a "war on poverty" that apparently involved lots of aid to poor folk.

But let me remind the reader that the contributions by Presidents Reagan, GHW Bush and GW Bush to our national debt eclipses President Johnson's debt by several orders of magnitude. Where Johnson ran up a few billion in debt, Reagan and both Bushes have added Trillions in debt.

BTW, if you want to view information about the U.S. Public Debt, here's a few web sites:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/ - primarily shows information about the how to buy U.S. bonds and treasury notes.

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm - Office of Public Debt - and http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm - the current debt to the penny. Note that the debt is broken down into two figures, that held by the public and intragovernmental debt. The latter is when a government agency (e.g. Social Security) buys U.S. bonds.

Back to the book ... His charts show that Reagan ran a total deficit in his 8 years of $1.34 trillion. GHW Bush ran a total deficit of $1.04 trillion, in only 4 years in office. His prediction was that the "next president" would run a total deficit of $3.17 trillion in four years. Oofda!

As I said, fortunately Bill Clinton's term did not run that much of a deficit. But, to be fair, we probably can't give Clinton all the credit for not running that much of a debt, just like we can't place all the blame on specific Presidents in the past. The President is only one piece of this game, because it is Congress who creates the budget, and it is the people who create the economic activity from which the government siphons off dollars (taxation).

For example, the debt saddling GW Bush's reign is partly due to the economic downturn that shrank tax receipts. Of course all the stupid tax cuts and the stupid war have a lot to do with it, but if the economy had remained strong then the tax cuts and war would have been more easily handled. See? It's not all GW's fault, much as I like to complain about him.

The part of this book that's alarming is, what does the debt mean in practical terms? To understand that we have to consider a bigger picture than the debt, namely the income and expense structure of the U.S. Government.

Basically when we run a debt it's because income didn't cover the expenses in some year. This is true for a government just as it is for individuals. It's just that the debt a government can run is enourmous, and any problems the government runs into in debt repayment eventually effect us all.

Income comes from taxation and fees the government collects. When the economy does well, there's more money flowing around that can be taxed, and when it's doing badly there's less. Hence income fluctuates with the health of the economy.

It's the expense side of this which was very alarming. The expenses can be divided into three groupings: a) interest on the debt, b) required expenses, and c) semi-optional expenses.

Groups (a) and (b) are really the same thing, because if you don't pay the debt payments then the worlds lenders will get highly pissed off at the U.S. The U.S. debt is highly rated as the safest debt in the world, because it's always paid off. We can't afford to lose that status, can we?

In any case I split them into two groups for a reason. The stuff that falls into (b) are things like defense spending and "entitlement programs". The entitlement programs are (?were?) things like "welfare", and involved government payments that are required by law to be made, and whose amounts are tied to the rate of inflation. There are several other things that fall into required payments but the essential characteristic is that the government must make those expenditures.

The point made in the book is that if the sum of (a) and (b) remain less than the income then it remains possible to run the game simply through raising more debt. But if (a) and (b) were to exceed the income, then that means you're having to raise more debt to pay the required expenses. If the budget were to ever get into that configuration, then it becomes a vicious loop. By borrowing money to pay required expenses, that just expands the debt even more, which then increases the interest payments, making the required expenses even larger the next year. The technical term is "debt spiral".

Let's look at some current debt expense figures: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm

As we can see, the interest payments have been in the $300-400 billion per year range for a decade. That's a lot of money, and it's our tax money that pays for it.

http://www.federalbudget.com/ - This site shows the budget split out by department, and how the total budget is swamped by expenditures through the Defense Department, Health and Human Services, and the Interest on the National Debt. Obviously the proprietor of that site has an axe to grind (e.g. "want to kill the IRS") but the information is useful nonetheless.

What would happen if the U.S. were to enter the debt spiral? There's approximately two choices: hyper-inflation, and reneging on the debt. Since the U.S. would never renege on the debt, then it would be hyper-inflation, and the stories I've heard about living in hyper-inflating countries are not pretty.

While this book is hopelessly out of date, the scenario it paints can still happen. This book is worth reading if only to understand the scenario.

Follow the Uranium

There's this growing scandal ... the story is circling around former-Ambassador Joe Wilson's disclosure on July 6, 2003 that he made a trip to Niger to investigate the claims about Iraq buying Uranium from Niger. That led to top administration officials committing treason by disclosing his wife's secret identity, which was part of a broader campaign to discredit Joe Wilson.

In The continuing Rove Watch I point to a news article saying that we need to keep our eyes on that story. If we get distracted then the game will fail, and Karl Rove will continue in his job.

But, really, that's a short-sighted view of the game, isn't it?

Follow the Uranium (By FRANK RICH, Published: July 17, 2005)

This is Mr. Rich's point exactly. In his view Wilson and the rest of the current scandal is a McGuffin, which is a literary tool where an object, person, or thing seems to have supreme importance early in the story but turns out to be inconsequential in the long run. I suppose that Wilson's trip to Niger was only a small part of the evidence gathering that went into justifying this war.

The real story, and I agree with him, is the larger picture of the Administration foisting a false story upon us to justify a war that in truth was more of a distraction from the real problem. The real problem was the al Qaeda holed up in Afghanistan who largely were not captured and were able to continue operating. The Iraqi's had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks and attacking Iraq has been costly in lives and money, tarnished Americas reputation around the world, and allowed the real culprits to escape.

That is the real crime this administration has done.

Article Reference: 

Follow the Uranium

Is this what GW meant to create in Iraq?

I've been shaking my head for a long time over the result of the current Iraq war. At first it was just the sheer audacity of attacking a country that hadn't harmed this country (it was Afghani's and Saudi's who attacked America on September 11, 2001), especially as we learned about the lies used to justify the war. But then I researched the background material showing the neocon plan for the Middle East, and I realized just how nutty their plan is. To think you can force, at gunpoint, a country to adopt democracy is sheer lunacy.

An Axis of Cooperation?

Consider the question raised on the Stinkin' Desert Post. The status of the war in Iraq has driven the Iraqi and Iranian governments to cooperate between themselves on a variety of interests. Yup, Iran and Iraq cooperating. Didn't they fight a war, a nasty war, in the 1980's? Yup, they sure did, with America providing arms to both sides of the conflict.

Makes one shake their head in wonder.

Iran was declared to be part of the "Axis of Evil" by our President. Surely their goals for the Iraq war did not include having Iran and Iraq join in cooperation. The neocon plan was to reshape the Middle East by first toppling the government of Iraq, and then moving on to either Iran or Syria. Given the noises the U.S. leaders have been saying about Iran, and their desire for Nuclear weaponry, the designated next target is Iran.

So, why are Iran and Iraq cooperating?

About the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Jewish conspiracies

Supposedly there's this secret Jewish conspiracy, run by all the Jewish bankers and the rest of them, all Jews are bent on running the world. That there's an international jewish conspiracy of jewish bankers who eat children for breakfast. Therefore we must kill all Jews before they try to subvert our ways and destroy us. Nonsense like that has been distributed for years, right? But is it true, or is it just part of the history of demonizing the jews?

Now, where did that nonsense come from?

The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Hardcover)

This book is a graphic novel by Will Eisner that gives the history of the forgery that created the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the unmasking of the forgery, and the continued popularity of the book despite it being known as a fraud.

I, myself, had never heard of the Protocols until hearing Dave Emory mention it, and I didn't get an appreciation of what they are until reading this book by Will Eisner. The Protocols are the source material for the entire Jews-taking-over-the-world conspiracy theory. That story and the use of The Protocols to justify that story has been behind so much of the bloodshed and angst piled upon the Jewish people, including its use in Nazi Germany as the justification for the Holocaust.

What Will Eisner shows is the origins. A lesser known French author in the mid-1800's had a mission, he thought, to write novels that would inflame the public to rise up against Napoleon III. Instead he simply got arrested each time he wrote a new novel, Napoleon III stayed popular until his ill-fated war against Germany, and the lesser known author eventually committed suicide.

In 1905, however, some members of the Russian Court wanted to change Tsar Nicholas's attention and thought if they could make the Jews a scapegoat it would work to their advantage. They hired a propagandist who took a book written by a lesser known French author, changed some details, changed the names, and turned it into a screed against the Jews. The work was good enough for their ends, but the book lived well beyond the purpose to which they put it.

Originally it was meant simply to influence opinion in the Russian elite. It however spread, and spread, and spread, the first stop being Nazi Germany. But it went well beyond, being translated into dozens of languages all over the world, spread in many countries, especially in the Islamic world. And, as I said, it was a direct contributing factor to the Holocaust.

Eisner's book tells the story very well. As a graphic novel it tells the story in a way a written book relying on words cannot, especially in the hands of a master of the graphic novel like Eisner.

What strikes me most about this story is a spiritual teaching I've heard.

In a way, hate is hate is hate. Eisner starts the book with this idea:

Whenever one group of people is taught to hate another, a lie is created to inflame the hatred and justify a plot. The target is easy to find because the enemy is always the other.

What these Russian propagandists did was to take a hate-filled screed and change the target. Changing the target meant simply changing a few words here and there, as Eisner shows with a long series of of panels quoting, in parallel, matching sections from each book.

Hate is hate is hate. When you have a new target for hate, you simply change the name of the thing/person/event/etc you're hating. The hate stays the same, it is the target that changes.

Here are a few related books:

A Rumor About the Jews : Reflections on Antisemitism and "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" (Hardcover)

The Secret War Against the Jews : How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People (Paperback)

The Lie That Wouldn't Die: The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion (Paperback)